“It’s a mad pack of albino horses…”
Pat Gilbert talks to John Lydon.
When you hear Metal Box and Album, do you see how you changed as a person in those six or seven years? “They’re totally different, those records are like chalk and cheese because they’re different aspects of your personality. It’s all self-analysis at the end of the day, and also exposing yourself – which is the most frightening concept of being in a band. But both come from the same good, honest heart. There are Album moments that just sound wonderful about life, and slightly more sombre moments in Metal Box which, for a psychotic like me, are a bit more rewarding (laughs).”
Metal Box is very dark and Album’s quite angry… “The feelings on Metal Box are controlled whereas on Album the reins are left free, it’s a mad pack of albino horses, really. Mustangs just let run.”
Were you tickled that session aces with jazz backgrounds dug what you did? “I really needed support from people like the Ginger Bakers, and to be reminded that people really fucking respected what I was doing. I was viewing myself as cast aside, and possibly an enormous, talentless boring lump, lots of self-doubt. I was close to quitting, as the labels wouldn’t back me and that isolation gets to you in the end. Then Album happened and wow! I’ll tell you what we did, we took heavy metal by the scruff of its neck and smashed it back to where it should be. Refreshing.”
The irony was they weren’t credited on the album. “Yes, the record company had no idea who was on it! I thought, Good, let it sell on its own merits. It went straight into the American charts and I got sacked that week. Basically, they sacked all the best musicians in the world! It was interesting to be able to create scenarios that showed it was an industry that doesn’t know its own backside. Let alone the full-frontals I’m offering them. The only good review of the record came from Sting. He said it was the best album I’ve ever made! (Laughs) How did I feel about that? Confused as usual.”
Album gave us Rise, a big ‘pop’ hit. “I think it’s one of my best pop songs. The content of what it was about got me into hot water. It was that time when everyone was talking about how great Nelson Mandela was; but my history lessons went back further… people died. My message is there’s no political cause worthy enough that people should die for it. Once you start murdering your fellow human beings it’s over. Rise is about the stop of that. I related it to my own background: I’ve got Protestant and Catholic relatives in the north of Ireland, why were they killing each other?”